Seine, Caudebec-en-Caux

Boudin's Seine, Caudebec-en-Caux (1889) captures the Norman river at one of its most picturesque points — the old town of Caudebec with its remarkable fifteenth-century church seen from the Seine. Boudin's final years saw a sustained campaign along the Normandy rivers — the Seine, Oise, and their tributaries — that complemented his lifelong engagement with the Norman coast. The MuMa in Le Havre, devoted to modern and contemporary art, holds this work in the context of Boudin's central importance to the Norman and French artistic tradition. By 1889 his reputation was fully secured by his role in inspiring the Impressionists.

Boudin captures the Seine's broad, calm surface with his characteristic horizontal compositional emphasis — river and sky divided by the town's Gothic silhouette. His treatment of the water reflects his lifelong mastery of tonal relationships between sky and the surface that mirrors it, with the church tower providing vertical punctuation in the otherwise lateral composition.